Defeated Sheriff Arpaio Has No Regrets About Immigration Crackdowns

The outgoing sheriff of metro Phoenix says he was saddened by his defeat after 24 years in office, but expressed no regrets about launching dozens of immigration crackdowns that made him a national political figure but ultimately led to his downfall.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Friday he has been humbled by calls from supporters who bemoaned his loss Tuesday to Paul Penzone, a little-known retired Phoenix police sergeant.

“I am not going to say I let them down,” Arpaio told The Associated Press. “It’s just sad to see me go.”

The 84-year-old will end his tenure as Phoenix’s top law enforcer with a racial profiling verdict that discredited his immigration patrols and a criminal contempt-of-court charge against him for prolonging the patrols 17 months after a judge ordered them stopped.

Arpaio remains unapologetic in his decision 10 years ago to take on illegal immigration, despite the $48 million in taxpayer-funded legal costs from the profiling case and the misdemeanor charge that could expose him to up to six months in jail if he’s convicted.

Other police bosses were happy to leave the onerous duties of immigration enforcement to the federal government. But Arpaio said he had a duty to enforce laws passed by the Arizona Legislature, including one that barred immigrant smuggling.

“I am not going to say I am sorry. We did our job,” the sheriff said, adding that he is the “trophy for Hispanic groups coming after me.”

In the end, courts stripped away Arpaio’s immigration powers two years ago, and his role in the immigration debate since has consisted of speaking out publicly against federal border policies.

Lydia Guzman, a Latino civil rights advocate and longtime Arpaio critic, said the sheriff’s claim that he has no regrets about targeting immigrants doesn’t ring true.

“He is trying to play the martyr,” Guzman said. “I think that deep down inside, at some point, he probably realizes his immigration enforcement was his demise. That’s what got him in trouble.”

The sheriff, who raised $12 million in campaign cash mostly from people living in other states, said he didn’t expect liberal hedge-fund tycoon George Soros to give $2.3 million to a group that ran a TV commercial questioning Arpaio’s reputation for being tough on criminals.

Arpaio also blamed the U.S. Justice Department for announcing a day before early voting began in Arizona that it planned to prosecute him in a criminal contempt case.

For more on immigration, watch:

The sheriff said he believes he will be remembered for his tough jail policies, such as dressing inmates in pink underwear and jailing them in Tent City, a complex of canvas tents where prisoners are housed during Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat. Still, he realizes his successor could eliminate those fixtures.

Penzone has said he is open to the idea of closing Tent City and that he regards the pink underwear as a publicity stunt.

U.S. Supreme Court Reinstates Arizona Ballot Collection Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday reinstated an Arizona law that makes it a felony to collect early ballots, dealing a blow to Democratic get out the vote efforts just days before the presidential election.

The order from the nation’s highest court overturns an appeals court decision from a day earlier that blocked the new law. Democratic groups had already geared up to begin helping voters deliver their ballots to the polls, and the Supreme Court decision calls into question what happens to ballots they have already legally collected from voters in the approximately 20 hours that the law was blocked.

Collecting early ballots is especially effective among minority communities. Democrats allege the law hurts minorities’ ability to vote.

The decision comes just days ahead of a presidential election that has Arizona Democrats hoping to win the traditionally Republican state.

Arizona filed an emergency appeal hours after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the law Friday. Justice Anthony Kennedy referred the case to the entire Supreme Court, and the court issued a brief order overturning the appeals court. The 9th Circuit will now consider the law in a January session that it set when it blocked the law.

Republican lawmakers approved the law earlier this year over the objection of minority Democrats. GOP Gov. Doug Ducey called it a common-sense effort to protect the integrity of elections and eliminate voter fraud.

A split 9th U.S. Circuit panel had said that by blocking the law it was preserving the status quo for Tuesday’s election, which could come down to the wire in Arizona as Democrats spend heavily to get out the vote from Latinos and others angered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant comments.

For more on the election, watch:

Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote that the decision will not add or remove any valid votes. He said the law criminalized delivering someone else’s early ballot, which would still be counted.

Both parties have used ballot collection to boost turnout during elections by going door to door and asking voters if they have completed their mail-in ballots. Voters who have not are urged to do so, and the volunteers offer to take the ballots to election offices. Democrats, however, use it more effectively.

The law does not prevent voters’ family members or caregivers from turning in ballots.

Joe Arpaio’s Criminal Charge Reshapes Arizona Sheriff’s Race

The tough-talking sheriff of metro Phoenix has won six elections by crafting an image as a law enforcer who targets parents skipping out on child support, animal abusers and immigrants in the country illegally.

The election initially centered on the growing taxpayer costs of the case Arpaio lost three years ago.

The focus shifted after the U.S. Justice Department announced the day before early voting began that it would prosecute Arpaio for continuing his signature immigration patrols, which a judge concluded more than a year later had racially profiled Latinos.

Arpaio could go to jail for up to six months if convicted, but he would not be barred from office if he secures a seventh term. He has acknowledged breaking court orders but insisted the violations were unintentional.

The Republican sheriff‘s political strength has waned over the last few elections in the heavily Hispanic state, but a devoted base of supporters who are enthusiastic about his unorthodox tough-on-crime tactics as well as his impressive fundraising, much of it from outside Arizona, has kept him afloat.

His race against Democrat Paul Penzone, a retired Phoenix police sergeant who lost to Arpaio in 2012, marks the toughest campaign in his two-decade-long career.

The defiant sheriff isn’t backing down. Soon after the federal government agreed to prosecute him this month, Arpaio began running a TV ad claiming he was being targeted because of his immigration crackdowns and accusing the Obama administration of using the contempt case to hurt him politically.

“What a bunch of garbage,” Arpaio said.

He has walked away from criminal investigations in the past without facing charges and still has gotten re-elected. Arpaio faced a federal investigation four years ago on allegations that he retaliated against local officials at odds with him by accusing them of corruption.

Mike O’Neil, a local pollster who has followed the sheriff’s career, believes Arpaio will have difficulty emerging victorious this time given the stream of negative news from the racial profiling case and criminal charges.

The media-savvy sheriff who has bragged about his availability to news reporters declined a request Wednesday for an interview about the contempt charge.

His criminal case stems from Latino drivers’ complaints that they were singled out by race in Arpaio’s traffic stops while he made a name for himself as an immigration enforcer.

For more on the Republican Party, watch:

A federal judge, who was appointed by a Republican president, ordered him to stop the patrols but said Arpaio prolonged them because the sheriff believed his immigration enforcement efforts would help his 2012 campaign.

This election, his opponent has criticized Arpaio for botching hundreds of sex-crimes investigations and being evasive in court when he is called in to account for accusations of failed leadership. Penzone ran a commercial showing deposition testimony in which the sheriff repeatedly says, “I don’t recall.”

Penzone and other critics have blamed Arpaio for costing taxpayers $48 million in the racial profiling case. The cost is expected to rise to $72 million by next summer.

In an interview earlier this month at his Phoenix headquarters, Arpaio refused to say when taxpayers could reasonably expect the financial hemorrhaging to end. The sheriff said he could not publicly discuss the case.

“You want to see me back over there again?” Arpaio asked, pointing several hundred yards away at the federal courthouse where he has been scolded for not fully embracing changes ordered by a judge.

Penzone said Arpaio has no one to blame but himself for the expenses and the criminal charge against him.

“Leadership means owning up to responsibility, and he refuses to own anything,” Penzone said.

The legislation, House Bill 2023, was enacted by the Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature early this year and signed by GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. He called it a common-sense effort to protect the integrity of elections and eliminate voter fraud.

Both parties have used ballot collection to boost turnout during elections by going door-to-door and asking voters if they have completed their mail-in ballots. Voters who have not are urged to do so, and the volunteers offer to take the ballots to election offices.

The Arizona Republican Party joined the state in defending the law.

Appeals court Justice Sandra Segal Ikuta and Justice Carlos Bea rejected the Democrats’ effort. Ikuta wrote in her opinion that a lower court judge didn’t make a clear error when he concluded that limiting one of several ways voters could return early ballots didn’t significantly increase the burdens of voting.

“Further, any burden imposed by H.B. 2023 is mitigated by the availability of alternative means of voting” she wrote.

Chief Appeals Court Judge Sidney Thomas dissented, writing that “Arizona has criminalized one of the most popular and effective methods by which minority voters cast their ballots,” and that violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

Saturday’s order didn’t identify the judge who requested the vote of the full 9th Circuit but it was presumably Thomas. It gives the parties to the case until 5 p.m. Monday to file supplemental legal briefs.

The same three judges are considering a request by Democrats to order that ballots cast by voters in the wrong precinct be counted. And a U.S. District Court judge is considering another effort by Democrats that challenges Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s decision not to extend voter registration by a day even though it fell on Columbus Day.

Clinton Takes Fight to Republican Turf in Arizona

There is palpable momentum for Democrat Hillary Clinton in Arizona, a state so traditionally Republican that her party’s nominee for president has carried it just once in the past 64 years.

Encouraged by Donald Trump’s failure to unite the GOP in Arizona, long-hungry Democrats are scrambling to capitalize in the campaign’s final weeks. Should they succeed, the loss of Arizona and its 11 electoral votes would further complicate Trump’s narrow path to reaching the 270 threshold to win the presidency.

“This year, we know it’s much closer here in this state,” Michelle Obama told supporters at a rally for Clinton in Phoenix on Thursday. Campaign volunteers weaved through the crowd, asking supporters to donate time to call voters and knock on doors.

“Just look around this room,” the first lady told the crowd of several thousand. “Each of you has the power to swing an entire precinct and win this election for Hillary just by getting yourselves, your families and your friends to vote. You’ve got the power.”

Clinton and Trump have focused their travel and advertising on the few states that have made the difference in recent elections — chiefly Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. But with preference polls tightening in Arizona, Clinton’s campaign sees the state as a late addition to the list of closely contested states.

The campaign has poured $2 million into television advertising in Arizona and sent out Mrs. Obama, the brightest star on Clinton’s team of stand-ins. Her appearance capped a week that included campaign stops in Arizona by Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, and Clinton’s former primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“It is possible to win it, but it is going to be razor-thin there,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

The momentum in Arizona was evident at the first lady’s event, held in the same venue where Trump drew a much smaller crowd to a rally where he reaffirmed his hard-line position on immigration, which is unpopular among Arizona’s Hispanic community.

GOP Sen. John McCain, running for re-election, withdrew his endorsement after the revelation that Trump made sexually predatory comments about women in 2005. This past week, McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, further denounced Trump after Trump refused to say at the final presidential debate that he would accept the results of the election. Doing so, McCain said in a statement, “is every American leader’s first responsibility.”

For more on Clinton, watch:

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., went further. One of the most high-profile GOP opponents of Trump’s candidacy, Flake called Trump’s comments “beyond the pale.”

Republican Steve Voeller, a strategist and Flake’s former chief of staff, said Trump’s problems have given Clinton an opening. Voeller isn’t ready concede Arizona to Clinton, but he notes that Trump “doesn’t have a ground game here.”

“For as long as I’ve been watching this race, it’s been within the margin of error,” Voeller said. “I also think the trend lines are not good.”

John Merrill is an example of Trump’s problem. “Usually, I’m locked by now,” said the 56-year-old salesman from Goodyear, who said he has never voted for a Democrat. “I have real concerns, concerns about Trump as a person. I’m not fully convinced he has what it takes.”

Republicans have an advantage in voter registration in Arizona, but a well-organized push from Democrats has narrowed the gap in the past year.

Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, have grown in the state by more than 200,000 since 2010, according to One Arizona, a Hispanic outreach group.

It’s possible that the conditions in Arizona could yield similar results for Clinton in Georgia. Republicans have won in seven of the past eight presidential elections there, but polls show a close race.

Or in Missouri, Indiana and Utah, all states carried by Republicans in recent elections.

Clinton’s late play for Arizona not only demonstrates her campaign organization’s strength and flexibility, but also that she could increase her electoral margin in traditionally Republican places where Trump’s candidacy and policy proposals are viewed as out of step with a changing electorate.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a national trend at play now,” said Republican strategist David Kochel, a senior adviser to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush’s failed 2016 White House campaign. “The only question now is where is the bottom, and how many good Republicans will be forced to join (Trump) there?”

Donald Trump’s Wall Would Be a ‘Waste of Money’

Donald Trump rode to the top of the Republican ticket promising a “big, beautiful, powerful” border wall with Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants. Along that border, however, Americans are more likely to call the wall a “waste of money” according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The results show that while the New York businessman may have expected his tough stance on immigration to fire up support nationally, it seems to be falling short in a state heavily affected by illegal immigration, and where he is now facing a surprising challenge from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Asked if a wall would be “an effective barrier or a waste of money,” 47% of Arizona residents picked “waste of money” and 34% picked “effective barrier”, with the rest picking neither, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 21% picked “waste of money” and 57% picked “effective barrier.”

Most Arizonans also believed it is not realistic to expect Mexico to pay for the wall, something Trump has vowed would happen if he’s elected president on Nov. 8, according to the poll.

The results lined up closely with nationwide opinions of Trump’s immigration policy: 49% of American adults say the wall would be a “waste of money” and 31% say it would be an “effective barrier.”

“As big and powerful, as rich as this nation is, we cannot just leave the door open,” said Tony Estrada, Santa Cruz County Sheriff, who has served in law enforcement in the border county for 49 years. “But, we need a realistic and humane process. Donald Trump is … catering to people’s fear.”

Polls show Arizona, a state that has voted Democrat only once in a presidential election since 1952, has become competitive. The Real Clear Politics average of polls showed Clinton ahead there by 1.3 percentage points. Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Trump ahead there by 4 points.

Clinton’s campaign said last week it would spend $2 million more campaigning in Arizona before the election.

Arizona’s border with Mexico is 370 miles long, covering an isolated desert terrain that has drawn millions seeking to cross illegally. The state’s number of undocumented immigrants has fallen 35 percent from a 2007 peak to 325,000, according to the Pew Research Center, as Arizona cracked down on that population. Nationwide, the number has dropped 9 percent from a high in 2007 to 11.1 million undocumented immigrants.

Wendy Cornacchio, a 45 year-old Trump supporter from Phoenix, said she believes illegal immigration is still a problem—but she would rather see technologies like drone surveillance than Trump’s wall to address it. “I don’t think that necessarily building a wall will work, but the concept of closing the borders I agree with,” she said.

Florida is another closely-fought state that has seen large levels of illegal immigration, though by sea rather than by land. Some 41% of voters there said they believed Trump’s wall would be a “waste of money”, while 36% thought it would be an “effective barrier”.

Progressive activist groups in both Florida and Arizona have been using Trump’s hard line on immigration against him to mobilize Latinos for Clinton, who advocates a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Mi Familia Vota, for example, says they registered more than 15,000 people in Arizona this year.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English and Spanish in Arizona and Florida. The Arizona poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 19 and gathered responses from 2,600 people. The Florida poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 12 and gathered responses from 2,610 people. Both polls have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the total group and 3 percentage points for likely voters.

Conservatives Split Over U.S. Land Transfers to Western States

Every time Dean Finnerty sees the locked neon-yellow gate and “No Trespassing” sign deep in Oregon’s Elliott State Forest, he bristles at the growing movement to transfer federally owned land to U.S. states.

The 52-year-old conservationist and lifelong political conservative worries that cash-strapped states that acquire such land will ultimately be forced to sell to private companies only to extract oil, gas and timber.

He is one of many conservative outdoors enthusiasts to join liberal environmentalists in opposing such transfers. They stand against business interests and conservative states’ rights advocates who argue that handing the land to states will unleash its economic potential.

Finnerty likes to hunt bear and elk on public land in Oregon with his five sons. But their outings were curtailed two years ago when the state, which had acquired the land from the federal government, in turn sold some of it to logging companies.

“When the federal government owned these lands they were better equipped to keep and maintain them,” said Finnerty, who keeps a handgun in his truck in case he encounters a mountain lion. “The idea that we could lose these federal public lands is not acceptable.”

For more on water, watch:

Finnerty and his fellow sportsmen, many of them conservatives who instinctively oppose big government, are petitioning lawmakers, writing opinion columns and staging protests at state capitols. They fear losing access to prime hunting and fishing lands if states take control.

They have won backing from dozens of trade groups and companies, including fishing rod makers Orvis Corp and Sage and gun manufacturer Remington.

Their protest is at odds not just with anti-federalists such as the armed militiamen who seized control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year, but also many in the Republican Party mainstream.

Republicans last month officially embraced federal-to-state land transfers for the first time in their party platform, saying it is “absurd” that so much land is under Washington’s “absentee ownership.”

The ideological standoff marks a new front in the “Sagebrush Rebellion,” the decades-old fight over land-use in the U.S. West.

At stake is control of roughly 640 million acres of federally owned land, more than one-fourth of the U.S. land mass, most of which falls across a dozen Western states,according to the Congressional Research Service.

Supporters say transfers could be lucrative. Oil and gas reserves on federal lands could generate $12.2 billion annually over the next decade, supporting more than 87,000 jobs, a 2013 University of Wyoming study estimated.

More than 30 bills pushing for federal land transfers were introduced in Western states in 2015, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which opposes transfers. More than a dozen have been filed this year, said the Center for Western Priorities, another opponent.

Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona and Nevada have passed bills to study the issue. Utah went further in 2012, demanding millions of acres of federal land and authorizing a lawsuit if that did not occur by 2014. Utah has not sued yet.

John Ruple, a University of Utah professor of public land law, said the state has no legal case and the U.S. Congress controls such transfers. Karla Jones of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of conservative lawmakers and business leaders who have ushered virtually identical land-transfer legislation through several state legislatures, hopes a new Congress after November’s election will support the push.

“The federal government does the exact same thing the states do. It leases land to the extractive industries,” she said. “The big difference is the U.S. generally loses money.”

But those fighting for the status quo, including Finnerty, say states lack the money and staffing to enforce the law across massive tracts of rugged, remote terrain. There has been no wholesale transfer of federal tracts in decades, though small transfers are common.

Oregon received the Elliott State Forest from the U.S. government in a 1930 land transfer, hoping to fund schools through timber sales and investments. But it sold thousands of acres to logging companies in 2014 after revenues plunged.

Next year, Oregon hopes to fetch more than $220 million for the remaining 82,500 acres.

“This is a coordinated, multiyear campaign to take away our federal public lands, which are an American birthright,” said Whit Fosburgh, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

This Is the Country’s Hottest New City for Autos

A few things you probably know about the Phoenix area: It has a lot of golf courses (more than 200). It’s hot (85% of the days per year are sunny). You might also know that it’s one of the top five growth markets for tech in the U.S. Intel alone has two factories in the region, and there are 66,000 IT workers—more than in Denver or Austin. It’s also home to the Barrett-Jackson collector car auctions, where for decades, Craig Jackson and his team have put some of the greatest examples of automotive history across the block and on TV.

What probably don’t know is that it’s not just the car industry’s history that’s making money there these days—but also its future. The Phoenix region is fast becoming a key center of the burgeoning self-driving car ­industry.

Googlegoogl announced earlier this year that it will make Chandler—one of the 23 cities that comprise the greater Phoenix metro area—the next hub for testing and developing its expanding fleet self-driving test cars. Google has 55 autonomous vehicles on the road today and recently announced a deal with Fiat-Chrysler for another 100. “We want to learn how sensors react to the dust in the air, and other area quirks—unique vegetation and golf-cart crossings, for example,” says Google spokeswoman Lauren Barriere. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for tech in Chandler and residents are supportive of self-driving cars being on the road.”

For more on Autos, watch this Fortune video:

Two years ago GMgm also chose Chandler as the site of one of its four IT centers responsible for inventing global software systems across the company’s business units, with some 900 employees—roughly 40% of whom graduated from college within the last two years. And Cruise Automation, a startup exploring self-driving systems that GM recently acquired for more than $1 billion, has opened facilities in Phoenix. Others, too, from behemoths such as Uber and Toyota tm to start-ups—like Beepi, a used-car buying and selling solution, and Turo, a peer-to-peer car rental service—have built significant presences in the region.

One of Phoenix’s most interesting and fast-growing businesses is Local Motors, a next-gen manufacturing and consulting company that uses 3D printing, modular construction and open-source technologies to rapidly build vehicles customized to solve specific transportation challenges. To that end, Local Motors just launched its first autonomous vehicle, a public “bus” designed for a mixed-use community in National Harbor, outside of Washington, D.C. Using its building-block approach to construction, the company can go from design to mobile prototype in less than a month; the traditional OEM approach takes years.

Why Phoenix over, say, Silicon Valley? Or even Detroit? Businesses say they like the low costs, strong infrastructure, and huge pool of computer-science grads from local universities. Moreover, the state’s governor issued an executive order calling for autonomous driving in the state “regardless of whether the operator is physically present.” Plus, robots don’t mind the heat.

A version of this article appears in the August 1, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline “The country’s hottest new automotive city is …Phoenix?”

What Happened When Ford Tested Its Self-Driving Car in Total Darkness

One of Ford’s self-driving cars has successfully navigated a winding road at night and without headlights, showing that it can operate without the usual cameras that depend on sunshine and street lamps.

Ford’s self-driving cars typically use a combination of radar, cameras, and light-sensitive radar called lidar to detect—and avoid—what’s around it. The recent test at Ford’s Arizona proving ground showed lidar is advanced enough to operate independently on roads that don’t have stoplights, the company said on Monday.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter about the business of technology.

“Thanks to LiDAR, the test cars aren’t reliant on the sun shining, nor cameras detecting painted white lines on the asphalt,” says Jim McBride, Ford technical leader for autonomous vehicles. “In fact, LiDAR allows autonomous cars to drive just as well in the dark as they do in the light of day.”

Lidar emits short pulses of laser light so that the vehicle’s software can create a real-time, high-definition 3D image of what’s around it. Ford’s lidar sensors, which shoot out 2.8 million laser pulses a second, detects nearby objects and uses cues to determine the best driving path.

Ford’s self-driving cars are also equipped with high-resolution 3D maps, which include information about road markings, signs, geography, landmarks, and topography. When a vehicle can’t see the ground, it detects above-ground landmarks to pinpoint itself on the map, and then uses that map to drive successfully in inclement conditions, the company says.

Why Ford hasn’t released self-driving cars:

The successful test doesn’t mean Ford will ditch other sensors. Self-driving cars need as much data as they can process to make them better drivers than humans. But it’s an important early validation of the tech Ford is using—and the company providing it. Velodyne, a longtime partner of Ford, has developed the sensor technology used the autonomous Ford Fusion hybrids.

Ford f announced in January plans to add 20 Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicles this year, bringing the company’s autonomous fleet to about 30 vehicles that are being tested on roads in California, Arizona, and Michigan. Last month, Ford enrolled in the California Autonomous Vehicle Testing Program, which already includes companies like Nissan, Volkswagen, and Google.

The new Fusion hybrids will be equipped with the latest sensor technology from Velodyne. The solid state sensors will be smaller—about hockey puck size—and have a longer range of 200 meters in which they can detect obstacles like trees that they car’s computer system would then know to avoid.

Lessons Learned Standing in the Tesla Model 3 Reservation Line

“Find the ticket guy! You have to talk to that ticket guy,” a Phoenix man shouted as I rounded a cluster of people coiled in a snake-like queue in front of the only Tesla showroom in Arizona.

This nameless ticket guy had reached legend status among the more than 200 people who descended Thursday upon the Scottsdale Fashion Square in the early morning hours—a time typically reserved for mall walkers and the occasional security guard. (That number would eventually surpass 900 people.) He prevented chaos and was generally credited for the excited, yet relaxed mood among those who had lined up hours before the Tesla store opened to reserve the automaker’s first mass market all-electric car: the Model 3.

The elusive ticket guy turned out to be easy to find. He was No. 3 in line and a highly organized guy.

Tesla’s Direct Sales Model

Tesla has a different business model than other automakers. It sells its own cars directly online and through branded stores, not through franchised dealerships. All U.S. states have laws that prevent automakers with existing franchisees from opening their own dealerships to compete with them.

But some states—such as Arizona, Michigan, and Texas—have taken an extra step and passed laws that ban direct sales. In these states, Tesla can still have a showroom, where consumers can look, but not buy, its Model S, Model X, and eventually, Model 3 vehicles. Tesla staff cannot discuss the cost of the car. They must instead direct customers to the website or a store in a neighboring state for more information.

The Model 3 is arguably Tesla’s most important introduction to date. The company’s mission has always been to produce a mass-market electric vehicle. It’s why Tesla is building a massive $5 billion battery factory in Nevada that will have the capacity to produce 50 gigawatt-hours of battery packs a year. By the end of 2017, the facility is expected to reduce the per-kilowatt-hour cost of Tesla lithium-ion battery packs by more than 30%.

That improvement in battery performance translates into a car that is cheaper buy. The Model 3 will cost $35,000 before tax incentives. The Tesla Model S sedan starts at about $70,000 for the base model.

In other words, the Model 3 is a big deal. It’s why so many people—shareholders, rivals, skeptics, and fans alike—are watching and analyzing every step that Tesla makes with this launch, leading up to the March 31 reservation event and the car’s eventual 2017 release.

Why Arizona Matters

Few were surprised by long lines in California, a state that encourages electric vehicle ownership through incentives, infrastructure, and laws like access to the magical carpool lane. It’s also where Tesla is based.

It was more difficult to gauge what would happen in Arizona, a state that despite the anti-Tesla direct sales ban provides some modest incentives for alternative fuel vehicles. In certain urban areas, it has built up public charging infrastructure.

When I entered the Tesla store in the Scottsdale Fashion Square around 7 p.m. on March 30, one couple was inside. There were no signs of people preparing to camp out in hopes of entering the reservation line early.

By the following morning, a different scene had unfolded. At 10 a.m., when the Tesla store officially opened and began accepting $1,000 deposits for the Model 3, about 900 people were lined up. An initial queue of about 60 people were in an official area set up with the kind of movable barriers you might find outside a club or concert. From there, a long line formed, snaking its way down the middle of the mall to the entrance of the Nordstrom department store before folding back and returning short of the Tesla store.

In some ways, states like Arizona—not California—are the true testbeds for Tesla’s future. Yes, far more people reserved Model 3 vehicles in California than in Arizona. But demand in a state where people must go out of their way to reserve, buy, and drive an electric vehicle can help gauge acceptance by the general public across the United States. In Arizona, it wasn’t just the number of people that showed up to reserve a Model 3 that surprised me. It was who was lining up, and their willingness to throw down $1,000 to reserve a car nobody had seen publicly yet.

Back to the Ticket Guy

The ticket guy is Jarod Prosise, a software engineer at Garmin, who has never driven a Tesla before. He’s never been a passenger in one either. Yet here he is, No. 3 in line, ready to plunk down $1,000 for a car he’s never seen, let alone driven. And in that line of more than 900 people, Prosise wasn’t so unusual.

Of the 30-odd people I spoke to, three-quarters had never driven a Tesla before. Many owned electric hybrids, the Prius being the most common. But others owned gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars, and they said never seriously considered buying a hybrid before.

Of course, there were those who seemed to fit the Tesla profile more closely. The No. 1 person in line, Dave Shackelford of Phoenix, owns a 2013 Nissan Leaf with a license plate that says “Tesla” and is a “huge fan” of CEO Elon Musk. Shackelford said he was compelled to show up and reserve a Model 3 in part because Tesla is “the only car company that takes electric cars seriously.”

The people waiting in line represented a range of ages—from folks in their 60s to others in their early 30s—and came from all over the state, including Tucson, Flagstaff, and Prescott. Most of the ones I interviewed had professional jobs—a few engineers, software developers, a veterinarian, an IT specialist, and even the director of public relations over at GoDaddy.com.

They all shared one thing in common: every one of them handed over $1,000 deposits—albeit refundable ones—without actually seeing the product. The Model 3 wouldn’t be unveiled until later that night.

The phenomenon wasn’t isolated to Arizona. By the time CEO Elon Musk took the stage to unveil the Model 3, more than 115,000 reservations had been made worldwide—and that figure has certainly grown since that tally. If all of those reservation holders actually buy a Model 3, that’s more than $4 billion in revenue for Tesla.

It was a turnout that seemed to even catch a normally optimistic Tesla staff by surprise. Everyone except the ticket guy.

Prosise says he arrived at 5:43 a.m. A couple dozen other people were there, and a line formed. Within a few minutes, a security guard told them they couldn’t congregate until 8:45 a.m. Prosise had anticipated a large crowd as well as an equally unprepared staff and security. Before he left his house that morning, Prosise grabbed a roll of tickets, the remains of a raffle from a baby shower his wife had hosted the year before.

Prosise handed out the tickets to the now anxious and ever-cranky group. The tickets would allow them to disperse as security had asked while still maintaining their place in line. By 9 a.m., he had passed out 230 tickets, the official line was finally established, and Tesla staff had agreed to honor his unofficial fan-based ticket system.

An hour and three minutes later, Prosise and a few other early birds exited the Tesla store amid cheers from the crowd and shouts of congratulations.